Days In The Sun
by Laura Schiller
Summary: My prediction for "Star Trek: Picard". Seven and the Doctor struggle with the rise of prejudice against artificial life forms, but a secret mission gives them hope.


Days In The Sun

By Laura Schiller

Based on: _Star Trek Voyager/Star Trek: Picard_

Copyright: CBS

/

"_All those days in the sun _

_What I'd give to relive just one _

_Undo what's done _

_And bring back the light"_

\- "Days In The Sun", _Beauty and the Beast _soundtrack_, _Walt Disney Records, 2017

/

Whispers followed Seven of Nine as she passed through the halls of Starfleet Medical, into the lift and down to the lowest level. Heads turned, eyes flickered, steps sped up; people backed away as she passed, as if even the air around her were infected with nanoprobes. No one, not even the receptionist to whom she announced her appointment, looked her in the eye.

She was used to it, but it still made her skin crawl. The accuracy of her Borg hearing didn't help matters one bit.

"_She's still going to the EMH?"_

"_Like none of our _real_ doctors are good enough for her!"_

"_I mean, she's not exactly real herself, is she? Borg, hologram, not much difference."_

"I _wouldn't want her as a patient – do you have any idea how easily those nanoprobes can spread? Better him than us. At least he's already a synth."_

"_God, he freaks me out. I don't see why they didn't delete him along with the others."_

"_Because Admiral Janeway and the Voyager crew raised hell about it, that's why. They'd have made him a citizen if HQ had let them. Giving up the mobile emitter was the compromise they reached."_

"_Bet you one of these days he'll get his subroutines crossed and run amok. It'll be Utopia Planitia all over again. Kaboom!"_

"_With any luck, he'll take the Borg woman out too."_

She kept her head high and her spine straight as harsh laughter echoed behind her. Normally, she did her best to block them out, but today she let them make her angry. For the first time in twenty years, her anger had a purpose. She was using it to fuel her for the mission at hand.

She pressed the door chime to the Doctor's office.

"Come in."

The rich, expressive baritone voice she knew as well as her own seemed to have faded. It was an illusion, she knew, but every time she came to visit him, he sounded a little more tired, a little more discouraged. In those first weeks after losing his mobile emitter, he used to spring to the door and pepper her with questions about the progress of his case. But as the years went by, his hopes had slowly faded, until the two of them had almost grown used to the situation.

Almost.

He was sitting at his desk with his feet up, reading a padd and humming along to a Frank Sinatra recording. His office was windowless and even smaller than _Voyager_'s sickbay, with just one biobed and walls painted the color of weak oatmeal, but his friends (including Seven herself) had done their best to make it a home. Holos of their old crew taped the walls along with Miral's childhood drawings, a folded-up keyboard piano leaned against a well-stocked bookshelf, and the sound system was better than any doctor's office needed to be.

"If this is about the puddle in Lab Four," he said sharply without looking up, "Need I remind you that I am a doctor, not a janitor?"

"I know," said Seven. "Hi."

He swung his feet down to the floor, put down the padd, and rounded the desk with his arms held out. His face, so weary a moment ago, lit up with a sudden warmth.

"My dear, I'm so glad to see you." He squeezed both her hands, human and Borg-enhanced, between both of his. "You look wonderful."

There was a wistful note in his voice that told her how much she had changed. A stranger would probably mistake them for both being in their fifties these days. She dressed differently, too, as the exosuit was even more impractical for Earth than for _Voyager._ With her dark green parka and the gray streak growing in her hair, she knew she was lightyears away from the Seven of Nine he kept in his memory files. Even her speech patterns had adapted.

Judging by the light in those hazel eyes of his, however, she also knew he still meant what he said.

"I hope your tricorder agrees," she shot back. "Now, who's been making you clean puddles?"

"Oh, that?" He waved her question away with an embarrassed shrug. "Never mind. One of the interns is under the mistaken impression that being synthetic means I'll clean up his mess for him."

"Send him to me."

"I can handle it!" The Doctor rolled his eyes. "It's nothing I haven't heard before."

"You shouldn't have to," said Seven firmly. "And you may not have to for much longer."

"Excuse me?"

"I have something to tell you."

/

When she finished explaining to him about Admiral Picard's request, the Doctor's first reaction was just what she had predicted.

"Seven, you mustn't!"

"It's not your decision, Doctor."

"But – the _Romulans!" _He said this in a fierce whisper, his round eyes going rounder than ever with fear. "Have you ever met their soldiers? I have, on the _Prometheus_. They talked about hacking my program to torture me as if it were everyday procedure. And even _they _were afraid of their secret police." He huddled into his uniform jacket; he was impervious to temperature, but the mere memory of the officers he had fought on that mission seemed to have given him a chill. "Now you're talking about Romulan agents armed with Borg technology? For the love of God, didn't we suffer enough on _Voyager _to last a lifetime? It's too dangerous. It's out of the question!"

"The more dangerous the Zhat Vash are," Seven replied, locking her hands behind her back for strength, "The more reasons we have to keep a valuable asset like Soji Asha out of their hands."

"She's a person, not an asset!" the Doctor snapped.

Between them on the desk lay Seven's padd, with a recording Picard had shown her of Commander Data's painting, _Daughter._ The girl in the painting looked very small next to the stormy ocean, her white cloak billowing around her like waves threatening to engulf her, but her bright blue eyes were steadfast as they gazed at the viewer.

"She's both," said Seven. "The Federation needs her … and she deserves another option besides working for the people who killed her sister."

The Doctor turned his face away, and she could have bitten her tongue. Would she never learn to say the right things at the right time?

"I work every day for the organization that killed my brothers and ruined my father," he said, adjusting his Starfleet commbadge with a quiet bitterness that was all too familiar. "So, yes, I do see your point. Dr. Asha's situation is one I would not wish on anybody."

"I'm sorry - " She placed a tentative hand on his shoulder.

"It's all right." He took her hand, patted it gently and let go. "Or … or rather, it's not all right, but it makes no difference now."

Seven recognized the haunted look in his eyes as the same one Dr. Zimmerman had worn in the last years of his life. Learning that Starfleet had cancelled the EMH program had shaken the old man's already fragile health as well as his reputation; he hadn't lived long after that. The Doctor, on the other hand, might have to live imprisoned and disgraced for centuries to come.

"Doctor … " She coughed to clear away the lump in her throat. "I joined this mission for _you_."

"For me?" The momentary touch of warmth in his voice was quickly buried under several layers of sarcasm. "I don't see how risking your life by chasing Romulan assassins and breaking into Borg cubes could possibly benefit me."

"If Picard convinces Asha to defect, and if she's willing to publicize her story, think of what that would mean for synthetics everywhere. If she can earn enough sympathy from the general population - "

"You never used to speculate this wildly." But despite himself, she could see a glimmer of hope take hold of him as he glanced down at the picture of the woman in white.

"And even if that's not the case," she went on recklessly, "Picard is still useful as an ally. He is a man of influence, and he speaks of the late Commander Data as an equal."

She had been skeptical (not to say downright rude) when the Admiral had first approached her. Like the Doctor, she understood how dangerous this mission could be, especially without Starfleet's permission. Also, she dreaded having to work with Borg technology alongside the former Locutus, and she could sense that Picard felt the same about her.

But the old man's care for his synthetic friend had shone through every word he spoke. Seven was one of the few people left who understood how that felt.

"One washed-up veteran, no matter how famous, won't be able to get my mobile emitter back."

"Perhaps not," Seven admitted. "But if there's any chance, no matter how remote, for you to be free … "

On their first day after being released from Starfleet's debriefing, the two of them had spent an afternoon just walking through the city, feeling the sun and the wind on their faces, looking up at old buildings and out over the ocean. He'd bought her a strawberry crepe from a food truck and linked arms with her when the evening grew cold. They'd even danced together, courtesy of an old busker playing his guitar. She could still hear the strumming along with the distant calls of seagulls.

The Doctor's idea, of course – she'd complained about how much time they were wasting, when she should have been searching for employment and a place to live. But it was thanks to that day that San Francisco had become a home to her.

She would never stop until the Doctor could see sunlight again.

The same applied to Index, one of the few Starfleet AI's still permitted to exist for the sake of convenience. Or Haley, whom Barclay had smuggled away in a data cylinder just before Jupiter Station's holography department was dismantled. They all deserved a better world than this.

"Must you do this?" asked the Doctor, his voice hushed with pain. "Don't you see? If I'm to keep living like this … " He paced the length of the tiny office and back again. "It's easier without hope. I can't face another disappointment. I simply can't."

"_I _can," she said grimly. "As many as it takes."

She picked up his tricorder from his desk and held it out to him. It was antiquated by now, being the same tricorder she had once modified for him in exchange for her dating lessons, but it still functioned perfectly and he refused to part with it. He looked down at it for a moment in silent abstraction before beginning to scan her.

"There's no point … " The whirring instrument passed so close to the palm of her hand that it bordered on a caress. " … in telling you to be careful, is there?"

"I will be as careful," her eyes met his from only centimeters away, "As circumstances permit."

He circled around her to run the tricorder along her spine. "I'll miss you, Seven."

She couldn't see his face, but the rough note in his voice said it all.

_I've missed you every day for twenty-one years, _she wanted to say. _Sometimes I miss you even when you're right in front of me. _But if she said that now, she might never have the strength to leave.

"I will come back," she said to him instead.


End file.
